Make It Mindful: An Education Podcast

In this episode of Make It Mindful, Seth talks with Dr. Grant Atkins and Dr. Caroline Miller — a researcher who studies how educational technology gets implemented and whether it works, and a former high school teacher who left the classroom just as generative AI was beginning to reshape how students write — about the current backlash against ed tech and what's actually driving it. The conversation takes place inside Seth's long-running professional learning community, which gives it a candor that more formal interviews rarely allow.

Together, Seth, Grant, and Caroline explore what's getting lumped together under "ed tech backlash" — social media, pandemic-era screen fatigue, and generative AI — and why those distinctions matter for the decisions teachers and administrators actually have to make. Early in the conversation, a detail surfaces that reframes the whole discussion: a twelve-year-old who told Seth she could tell when her teachers were using AI to write her feedback, and that it bothered her because she felt it was their job to do it themselves. They look at the research on when technology supports learning and when it substitutes for the human relationship at the center of teaching, and at the SAMR framework as a lens for evaluating whether any given tool is doing something genuinely new or just digitizing what was already there. The conversation also turns to what parents should be asking schools about technology use, and why that gets harder when it requires parents to examine their own screen habits alongside their children's. It closes on something Grant says plainly and without hedging: he doesn't think anyone knows yet what acceptable AI use looks like, and the conversation schools and families need to be having is still largely unfinished.

Key topics
  • Ed tech backlash and what's behind it
  • Social media, classroom tools, and AI as separate conversations
  • SAMR framework for evaluating technology integration
  • Teacher burnout and technology as workload support
  • Parent-teacher communication about screen use
  • AI disclosure and student-teacher trust
  • Professional learning communities for educators

Links & Resources

Guest Bio: Dr. Grant Atkins
Dr. Grant Atkins is a researcher who studies professional development and the effectiveness of educational technology in classrooms. His work examines how ed tech tools are implemented at the school and district level and whether they achieve the learning outcomes they promise. He and Seth have been colleagues since meeting at Princeton University.

Guest Bio: Dr. Caroline Miller
Dr. Caroline Miller spent nearly a decade teaching advanced high school students before leaving the classroom as generative AI was beginning to reshape how students approach writing. Her teaching experience spanned discussion-based and writing-intensive classrooms, where she worked closely with students on critical thinking, source evaluation, and independent inquiry. She and Seth have been colleagues since meeting at Princeton University.

About the Host
About the Host: Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of two podcasts: Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning and Why Distance Learning? Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators — building the kind of structured, human-centered learning the podcast explores.

Creators and Guests

Host
Seth Fleischauer

What is Make It Mindful: An Education Podcast?

Make It Mindful is a podcast for educators and school leaders who think seriously about how learning is changing and want to explore what to do next. Hosted by Seth Fleischauer, founder of Banyan Global Learning and former classroom teacher, the show covers three territories: what AI actually changes about teaching and learning, what it takes to help students connect meaningfully across cultures, and the human conditions — belonging, awe, trust, emotional regulation — that learning depends on regardless of what else changes.

Guests include district administrators, researchers, clinical psychologists, curriculum designers, and classroom practitioners. Conversations are long-form and honest. Produced by Banyan Global Learning.

#Transcript — Grant Atkins & Caroline Miller
## Ed Tech Backlash Episode
### Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning

*Timestamps are approximations after editing.*

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[INTRO — recorded separately]
[00:00:00]

**PRE-INTRO BLOCK**

Support for Make It Mindful is brought to you by World Savvy, partnering with K-12 schools, districts, and community leaders to prepare youth to thrive in a complex, interconnected world.

Make It Mindful is proud to feature Svitlo School, empowering the future social, political and business leaders of Ukraine to become confident global citizens.

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**INTRO PROPER**

Welcome to Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning, the podcast about how students learn, who they're becoming, and how new technologies and global experiences reshape teaching.

I'm Seth Fleischauer, founder of Banyan Global Learning.

In this episode, I'm joined by two colleagues from my professional learning community — Dr. Grant Atkins, a researcher who studies how ed tech gets implemented and whether it actually works in classrooms, and Dr. Caroline Miller, a former high school teacher who left the classroom just as generative AI was becoming something students and teachers had to reckon with.

We talk about why the ed tech backlash is harder to navigate than it looks — social media, classroom tools, and AI are getting treated as one issue when they're asking for pretty different responses — and what more honest conversations between parents, teachers, and schools might look like.

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**POST-INTRO BLOCK**

This episode of Make It Mindful is brought to you by Banyan Global Learning.

At Banyan Global Learning, we design structured live experiences that connect classrooms to the world.

Banyan Global Cohorts is a 4-week journey in global competence. Classrooms join an international cohort of 3–4 schools and meet weekly during regular class time for facilitated, 45-minute sessions built around a compelling Big Question.

Students explore global contexts through virtual field trips, exchange ideas with international peers, and create a final digital artifact that expresses identity, perspective, and connection across cultures.

If you're curious about what this could look like in your classroom or school, we'd love to talk. You can find us at banyangloballearning.com.

And now here's my conversation with Dr. Grant Atkins and Dr. Caroline Miller.

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Seth (00:01.442)
Doctor Grant Atkins and Doctor Caroline Miller, welcome back to the podcast.

Caroline (00:07.039)
Thanks for having us.

Grant Atkins (00:07.446)
Thank you.

Seth (00:10.086)
the three of us, in addition to Dr. Kirsten Green, are members of a professional learning community. Personal learning community was the PEEF stand for? Is it professional or personal? I feel like both, maybe. Yeah, okay. that we've been doing this now for what, about three years? we meet once a month. We call it Tiger Team EDU. the four of us having met at Princeton University and all ended up in education. And it's been an incredible resource for me. I'm wondering how the experience has has been for you guys. What is what does the RPS PLC mean to you?

Seth (00:56) *(approx)*
We'll start with Doctor Atkins.

Grant Atkins (00:57) *(approx)*
thanks. I it has been it's like you said, it's great to have that community with people who have known you for so long and sort of understand your role in the industry and can offer an outside perspective on different issues that you're having at work. you know, problems of, you know, whether it is interpersonal issues or you know, specific technical issues at work that you know having folks that understand different perspectives that can help you sort of step back a little bit and look at the problem in a different way has been very helpful. And also that understand you know sort of some of my weaknesses and things that I may be less likely to push on at work than maybe I should. things that you know things that I maybe think don't require follow up or don't see another connection that I can make and that you guys are very helpful in helping me see those connections and make those follow up meetings or you know can contribute in different ways. So that's how I've found it to be very useful for me.

Seth (02:21) *(approx)*
Wonderful. Dr. Miller?

Caroline (02:23) *(approx)*
No, I was gonna touch largely on perspective as as well. I mean, for a you know, we have I think we're coming from like global learning and research. And one of us was in a college classroom, one of us was in a high school classroom, you just get a broader perspective than maybe from your immediate colleagues. and we can talk about some things here that we can't, maybe with immediate colleagues. We've seen each other through a couple career transitions. and so it's nice to have a second a second group of people who are familiar with all of our the goals around education, but not in your immediate environment.

Seth (03:01) *(approx)*
And so if you know some people who are people you've known for a long time, maybe have that personal connection to you and and have a different professional perspective but related to education, I highly encourage you to schedule a monthly call or something that works for you. PLCs are great. One of the things that we've been talking about in our PLC is the tech lash. grant you just called it that. I've been calling it pitchforks for ed tech. it is this moment that we are in, the I think inevitable pendulum swing back from the pandemic when we maybe a bit thoughtlessly put a lot of tech in front of students for reasons that were pretty obvious at the time. And we are now questioning that in a lot of different ways. Dr. Miller, what do you make of the ed tech backlash? What's happening right now? where it's coming from, and D do all of the different stakeholders in this are they all talking about the same thing or is there some some muddied waters here?

Caroline (04:05) *(approx)*
That's a good a great question. I'll come at it first as someone who was teaching in a classroom during the the pandemic. And from that perspective, I think that the technology in that experience sometimes just made things harder for educators. we didn't have the time or resources to to learn it. We were often teaching half of a half of a class period to people who were in the room, half of a class period to people who were not in the room and so I think that for for educators we came out of that w wanting to to play down the the tech a a little bit.

Seth (04:43) *(approx)*
Well, let me let me clarify there, because I heard two things. One that you didn't have time to learn the technology and one the half and half like hybrid situation. you know, I've been in distance learning for almost 20 years. That is the by far the hardest style of teaching to do where you have, especially as as a single teacher, have a a portion of students online and a portion of students in person. It's like you're teaching two classes at the same time. It's it's really, really hard. Did you see any technology that was beneficial to your experience at that time, maybe even despite the fact that you weren't properly trained in how to optimize its use?

Caroline (05:31) *(approx)*
I th you know, I mean I think that the tech that was most useful to us then was the like learning platforms like Blackbot and Whipple Hill and and Canvas that we'd all been using before anyway. So it was just about repurposing it. but let me let me keep thinking about about that question. I mean, I think more recently I left the classroom right as AI was rising and started to see it be very useful for things like writing comments or like quarterly comments. I th so I think that that maybe has would have more of an impact on my answer about tech that was really helpful coming out of the of the pandemic.

Seth (06:16) *(approx)*
And I think it's interesting that in this conversation, we have already ventured from like standard ed tech from the pandemic into AI. I think that's part of what's going on here is that there is some confusion about the difference between social media, which is getting its time in the, you know, it's like big tobacco moment, and ed tech screen time and AI. I am curious, you talked about generating comments leveraging AI. The other day I met up with a common friend of ours, Laura McGinley, in Brooklyn. I was talking to her 12-year-old daughter and I asked her about AI. And the first thing she said was, My teachers are using it too much. And I was like, okay. Like, tell me more. She's like, Well, they're using it to give me comments on stuff. And like, that's their job. They should be doing that. And I was like, Well, how do you how do you know that they're using AI? And she was like, I can just tell. And I that like struck me deep, right? Like, and I think that I I've been listening to I listened to a podcast, Rebecca Chapman's the head of the Brookings Institute. She just came out with like a 200 page report on AI and education, the dangers, the risks and the potential benefits. And one of the greatest risks that she was talking about is this degradation of trust. When you talk about AI and education, the biggest issue is You know, any given teacher is going to talk about cheating, right? students cheating on their assignments. But I thought it was really, really interesting to surface this mistrust in the opposite direction of students questioning whether or not the feedback that they're getting from their teachers is authentic, if they are actually seeing them as students or if they are just cutting corners and putting it into AI and spitting it out. I'm wondering what your experience was with that 'cause you just listed it as a benefit. And I think a lot of teachers who have to grade ninety six papers would say that it is a great benefit. But did your students know you were using AI? Were you disclosing it? Did they did they care?

Caroline (08:21) *(approx)*
We had I had n I left the classroom, what was this, two years ago? And so we had not gotten to the point where we could use it ethically yet. So I toyed with it to write quarterly comments, so never comments on a on a paper, but did not but did not actually hand those comments to to students. So I was just at the point where I was seeing how teachers might have been able to start using AI to to make that work a little bit more manageable. I was teaching high school and pretty advanced high school students. and so I don't think that the AI I've seen is is proficient enough to comment on on something like a like a paper.

Seth (09:03) *(approx)*
Mm-hmm.

Seth (09:06) *(approx)*
Okay. so Dr. Atkins, you do a bunch of research on professional development, on the effectiveness of these tools in classrooms. What's your take on what's going on right now with this tech clash?

Grant Atkins (09:17) *(approx)*
Yes.

Grant Atkins (09:35) *(approx)*
I think it's a lot of you know, to speak to the tech clash, I think it's a lot of things rolled up into one. I think you're absolutely right to think about the pandemic and the quick rollout of ed tech programs across schools as as thoughtless and overwhelming for a lot of teachers, a lot of students, a lot of parents. and I think we are I think that is a big part of it. We're seeing a backlash to how the a lot of ed tech was implemented during the pandemic. I think we're also seeing sort of a reaction to AI more generally in society. I think a lot of you know, teachers, parents, students are you know, worried about the impact of AI on not only the classroom, but society, jobs, and, you know, the the way just the world in general. And I so I think that schools often become sort of the epicenter for a lot of people's fears about the way that you know their things they're seeing in their community and society. and so I think that there is certainly it's understandable that you know parents, teachers, students would be concerned about overuse of technology, whether that's in schools or at home. I think that as school and district leaders think about implementing technology, I think that they need to lead with making sure that teachers are able to do what they are best suited to do, to form a relationship with students and to guide their learning. And I think that the problem comes in when you try to use technology to replace that work of teachers. And when the technology is seen as a replacement for hard work, whether that's forming relationships with students, whether that's you know, providing substantive feedback on their work, I think that, you know, humans and teachers still need to be the center of that.

Grant Atkins (11:59) *(approx)*
But at the same time, technology can provide support, certainly, for teachers and for students. And it's shown to be effective in helping students practice discrete skills, helping students focus on when you have a classroom with very different levels of literacy, of math knowledge, helping to individualize some instruction and individualize practice as long as the teacher stays in the loop and is guiding the process, I think education technology can be very effective for those things.

Seth (12:37) *(approx)*
I I I agree with everything you're saying. I think the devil's in the details. I wonder where the the line is. and like specifically you were talking about the the human responsibility to form relationships. I don't think there's any teacher out there who's completely outsourcing that job. Right. I hope I hope I hope not, right? there's a question of like any given time that you spend with a screen as opposed to a person.

Grant Atkins (12:55) *(approx)*
Sure. Right.

Seth (13:07) *(approx)*
is time that you are not spending in the human relationship. And so there's a cost benefit analysis of okay, if we assume that I I'm and I I I guess there's an assumption there that that all time spent in relationship is actually positive, which is maybe not true, right? It's probably part of what's going on here is that teachers are struggling. teachers are are on the on the on the fast track to burnout, a lot of them. And anything that we can introduce to a teacher's day that subtracts rather than adds. that's something that they don't have to do because there's another way to get it done that doesn't require as much time and effort from them might benefit the classroom as a whole, but also the formation and maintenance of those relationships. You talked about practicing discrete skills. about differentiation and individualized instruction. I think that's the great promise of these ed tech tools that have have had AI embedded in them for quite some time. Are there are there actual like numbers around this of like this is the amount, I don't know, the amount of time, the amount the number of times per day, the the like like where is the line in terms of we have we we've gotten our returns from using this technology, and now those returns are starting to diminish.

Grant Atkins (14:41) *(approx)*
I don't think there's a specific number of minutes. I I think it completely depends on the purpose. I think it depends on the student, on the classroom. I think that like you said, teachers can be overwhelmed by different responsibilities of their job. And I think that the way that technology can help them is by playing a supporting role through some of these other stress inducing activities that teachers have to engage in, whether that's you know developing lesson plans, you know, figuring out which students should be in which groups. I think that technology and diving in using data from ed tech programs can help teachers to identify students the needs are identify the needs of students, whether that's discrete skills that they need to work on, whether it's sort of tapping into their interests or figuring out you know and they need to use their judgment as to, you know, sort of which students would work better with each other and you know, take the recommendations of the technology software and use their, you know, own judgment to to verify. But I do think that you know, the important thing is for you know, both the technology shouldn't be there to as like the the way to engage students. That's, you know, something that falls on the teacher. They need to be the ones to form that engagement and to form the relationships and use the technology as a supporting role, I think. Is in it's not so much number of minutes but how it's being used, I would say.

Seth (16:45) *(approx)*
Sure. And it's interesting because, we both are companies that benefit from students using technology for some of these purposes that we think are very meaningful and maybe not necessary, but beneficial. it's interesting that you say not for engagement, because that's one of the arguments that we make about the technology that that we use, right? And we're in this really tricky situation where We are a very human-centered program. The h the thing that we connect students to via technology are are live humans, like other people who are in places that they would never have access to if not for the magic of live video. And we talk about engagement a lot as one of the benefits of the use of this particular technology. And I think that does speak to the the the need for nuance of understanding that there are lots of different ways that technology can be used and they're not all equal, whether that's at school or at home, right? This is one of the things that we talk about with digital citizenship is the difference between, you know, scrolling through short form video and what that's doing to your brain versus using garage band to build a song. Right. Like obviously those are like two very different exercises. Dr. Miller, you worked with a lot of exceptional students. And I'm wondering if you saw examples of technology being used in the classroom, maybe in your class, maybe outside your class, where it really was transforming the experience. we we talk about SAMR, right? SAMR is this guide for how to include technology in your classroom and there's like the substitution, the lowest level. It's kind of like a Bloom's taxonomy for for technology integration. So substitution is the lowest level, then augmentation, then modification, then redefinition. And that redefinition making things possible that would not otherwise be possible, like that's like the holy grail of technological integration into the classroom. And I'm wondering if you saw many examples of that working at the the high level school that you did.

Caroline (19:10) *(approx)*
That that's such a good question. And I I th I think that the schools where I worked, there was s already such a tech lash that that we were all about discussion-based learning. And so there often were not devices in that classroom, maybe the days when students were writing papers, but by the time I left, mm, we were moving more and more towards in-class essay writing without computers because of generative AI. And so I'm trying to think in other departments, are there are there ways though I think what you're asking is are there ways in which technology really like expanded the world for those students or allowed them to do work that they wouldn't have been able to do without technology.

Seth (19:55) *(approx)*
Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah. And it sounds like it sounds like you don't it's either no or you don't know.

Caroline (19:59) *(approx)*
I think I think that nothing nothing's coming to mind. And that just feels like a wrong answer. I'm sure that I'm sure that there must be. I'm sure if s if I talked to my colleagues at at those former schools, they would be like, but you what are you you're forgetting this this big piece? but I think I think no that like the tech lash was pretty imminent and immediate. And I think that was coming from not only the the teachers who wanted a return to books and conversation and discussions and your own writing, but also from parents who wanted my classroom to be a pl one of the few places that wasn't mediated by phones.

Seth (20:30) *(approx)*
Yeah.

Seth (20:38) *(approx)*
And I I think that's interesting. We were chatting a little bit before we started recording here about the movie Toy Story Five, which Grant and I saw. and it like very much like puts parents on notice. I th I I saw it in a a room full of parents and kids, and I was like the only one laughing at a lot of the parts. And you know, I I teach digital citizenship to parents, so I just I was just appreciative of the way that they were kind of nailing it. Whereas I think a lot of parents were just sitting there uncomfortable, like questioning their decisions and whether or not they have already lost the the battle against the devices. But there is, I think, this this component of the tech backlash where parents who have relied, maybe maybe rely is too strong of a word, but employed technology as a method for their own parenting. wanting that to not happen in schools, perhaps because the screens are so omnipresent in their daily life, in their home life. Dr. Atkins, I'm wondering if that's part of what you're seeing?

Grant Atkins (21:57) *(approx)*
I think that's certainly part of it. I think that a lot of parents are probably, you know, did not grew up in a very different world, right? Where we were not surrounded by devices and now we are. And I think a lot of parents are probably looking at their own device use and realizing that you know, maybe they have not been the best role models for their children. I certainly feel that sometimes. and think that, you know, that they hope that they're getting you know, better role models at school and so I think that may be part of you know what's happening here. But I think the important thing for, you know, parents and teachers and everyone to model is more responsible device use and that, you know, that there are s you know very important things that devices have made possible, you know working at at different times, working across boundaries, recording podcasts for friends in three different parts of the country to talk about important issues. but the even though that's true, if you don't sort of name it and you don't

Seth (23:02) *(approx)*
Mm-hmm.

Grant Atkins (23:16) *(approx)*
discuss it with your children if you don't have that conversation and if you don't, you know, sort of model good behaviors, then you can feel guilty about it and you know, put pressure on teachers or on schools to you know, be a better role model than you feel that you are.

Seth (23:36) *(approx)*
And I wonder how much of this is just that first thing you said, which is having this open dialogue, having some transparency. whether it be between companies like ours and the schools that we service, districts and their member schools in terms of the policies that they have and why they have them, but especially at that that central Part of the educational landscape, the student-teacher relationship for teachers to A, understand why they're using technology and why they're not at any given time. And then to the extent that they're able to communicate that at the level that a student can receive, to have that conversation with students and be open to hearing how they feel about it and. the idea that it might not necessarily be consistent with some of the decisions that they've made and maybe be open to changing some of the things, the approaches that they're taking. And then you look at that at the parent level too, you know, we we have a lot of rules in our house in terms of technology use, like no phones at the table. I really try when I am on my phone, especially if I'm working on my phone, to tell my kids like, hey, you know, I I will be with you in about five minutes, but I'm not here right now, even though I look like I'm here. And that that must be that must be really hard for them, right? Like it must be really hard to like see your parent and know that even though they're here, they're not here. And that they're being pulled into this other world. And of course they're gonna wanna model that. Of course they're gonna wanna to be there as well, especially when. they've been it's been programmed to to draw their attention in so so effectively. but that that open dialogue, I I always talk about that as as like the starting point. And what that also requires is some some self-reflection on your own technology use and w what your limitations are, what roadblocks you have up and what happens when you bust through them. what things you're grappling with personally when it comes to your technology use. I'm wondering if that resonates for you, Dr. Miller. You've got a a baby girl who's not yet well, I guess you as as a single parent, you you do use some tech, right? In order to be able to just cover the gaps. and yeah, how how are you how are you thinking about this, having not actually gotten into the verbal part of this yet?

Caroline (26:00) *(approx)*
Yeah.

Caroline (26:10) *(approx)*
gonna chime in when when you were speaking that so my daughter's only two and I I think I do a really good job of leaving the phone by the door when she gets home and we just we play when when she between when she's home from daycare and and when she goes to goes to bed. But she totally knows when I'm not there. So if we're getting ready in the morning and I have to respond to a work email while she's eating breakfast before we go to school And I open my laptop, as soon as I open my laptop, she starts going, Mama, Mama. Like she knows that that that screen means that mama is not present. Right. and so like, yes, I guess we're I guess it's we're before it, but also like how she knows now, how long has she known? Like has, you know.

Seth (27:01) *(approx)*
Yeah.

Caroline (27:15) *(approx)*
Before she could s scream at me, Mama, Mama. and on the on the second part, she does we watch some Miss Rachel and some Mr. Rogers. Those are the the two shows that that sometimes I will watch with her. So she never watches by herself. I watch with her and we play the games that Miss Rachel, like we have the toys that Miss Rachel has, so that we're playing while we're while we're watching. but even that I feel is a little bit illicit. I would have preferred, you know, I think if I had had another parent in the house, I would have waited longer to to do that. And I do feel like like if she's ever with a sitter or if she's at school, like if they watched TV or did any sort of screens at school, I feel like that would eat into the total amount of minutes that I would let her have a a screen in in a day. So I th that was a little disjointed, but I was thinking about like sh she does know that screens already mean that people are not present. and I think there are like, yeah, more maybe more responsible ways to to use screens, but it's hard to to not have access to them at all.

Seth (28:50) *(approx)*
And so I wonder in terms of that open line of communication, I think that part of the job here is between parents and teachers. And I wonder, Dr. Atkins, what do you think parents should be asking their school about technology use in order to be able to understand the nuances of this issue?

Grant Atkins (30:33) *(approx)*
I think the you know you can start the conversation by asking, you know, how and why you're using technology in school. and school leaders should have, you know, an answer for why they're using technology and for the instructional purposes it serves, the ways that it can help to improve teaching and learning, the ways that it can help to individualized instruction and to to help teachers understand the levels that their students are at through assessments, you know, whether they are quick formative assessments or you know, more detailed assessments, and you know, how it is serving a purpose in the school. And I think if school leaders can't answer those questions, then the, you know, parents will probably have more questions. and, you know, and rightfully so. I think that you know parents should sort of also understand that you know their children and and students are growing up into a world that's going to be full of technology and by asking their schools to you know, to ban technology or to severely limit it is doing a disservice to their children because they won't be prepared. they won't have those skills that are necessary to navigate a world filled with devices and technology.

Caroline (31:32) *(approx)*
Yeah, that I would that's w similar to what I was gonna say, Graham. I think that parents need to be asking and are rightly asking how the the classrooms are preparing their child to Enter a world in in which generative AI will be will be rampant. And I think it connects a little bit to what you were saying, Seth, about digital citizenship. You know, even if we didn't, even if we weren't using generative AI in class, I think that we were s always teaching students how to think critically, think critically about sources, verify the credibility of sources. All of that is going to be incredibly important to them reading what Chat GPT or Claude spits back. spits back to them. I think that in the future too, teachers are gonna be, we're gonna be teaching students how to be good prompt engineers too, right? And that's that's something that's at the basis of everything we do in English class, even if we're not using an app, we are preparing the the child to enter a world in which they'll need those the skills that generative AI will will ask them to use.

Seth (31:32) *(approx)*
Yeah, I've got I've got some thoughts about that. You know, one of the things is that when people talk about AI literacy, they're kind of talking about three different things. one of them is how teachers can use AI, one of them is how students can use AI, and one of them is just about what AI is, which can be taught to both teachers and students. I think that third one is probably the most critical. for people to just understand how these machines work to the extent that that we as as a species understand how they work and you know why why they hallucinate. the in terms of prompt engineering, I I'm not I'm I think the verdict is is kinda has not come in on that yet. we we don't I interviewed Justin Reich on this program from MIT Teaching Systems Lab and he talks about ed tech hype cycles and how the the initial guidance that we had for students and how to use the internet was totally wrong. like how to evaluate sources. It was like, dot orgs are more trustworthy and It's gotta look professional and you know, all these things that were just very easily gamed by people who are trying to put false information out there. And it wasn't until like fifteen years later that they actually had the data to support what was a best practice approach, which is lateral reading. Right. So you like go to a a site, you find it, and then you go to many other sites and see how that site is being talked about, which is the best approach. to evaluating a a a source, but they needed like 15 years to work that out. And so that's where I think that like especially student use of AI, there's there's a lot of active experiments going on, right? and and we're all kind of part of that experiment. At the same time, I I I just I I mentioned that Brookings Institute report, that's like a 200 page report that they interviewed people from 50 different countries.

Seth (33:29) *(approx)*
There are a lot of people paying a lot of attention to this right now. And so there are some emerging best practices. I think we might get there quicker than the 15 years that Justin Reich was talking about. but but yeah, I guess the question is like w what the role of schools are in in all this. AI feels like something that is uniquely personal when it comes to tech use. There's a lot of like kind of shame around using it, even for adults. There's I I've heard the term secret cyborg where every everyone's kind of using it secretly and no one's really disclosing their own personal use of it. I think students to a certain extent understand that there's something like wrong there. I think a lot of them have have received the like a moral message around it that it feels a little wrong. I know my daughter, that was her first. like gut reaction to it. I sat down and was like, hey, you've got this essay. Let's see what this can do. This was like two or three years ago. And she was like, mm-hmm mm, no uh-uh, nope, nope. That machine can talk to me. I don't want to talk to that machine. And I I do I do wonder about the what a what is a school's role and what is a parent's role and how they can work together to make sure that we as a society don't get our knees knocked out. by this thing that's happening to us. I don't know. Grant, do you have a perspective on that?

Grant Atkins (35:03) *(approx)*
I mean, my perspective is I don't think we know. I don't think we know I at least I certainly don't know what, you know, AI use looks like in five years, ten years, or, you know, even next year. you know, the sort of like you said, I think there is a lot of, you know, sort of a shamed use of it. I think that's obviously an issue. I think we should be more transparent. About our use of AI, but I don't think that we know what the sort of acceptable use cases of it are. you know, if we use it to you know, grade a student's paper and to give comments to the student, like we discussed earlier, that you know, feels like a breakdown of the trust between student and teacher. But if the teacher discloses it, if the teacher reviews the comments and says that I would have said the same thing or this is even, you know, more insightful than the comments than I would have given because I had to grade a hundred papers in one night. you know, is the end result of that negative? I don't know. And I don't, you know, I don't think we know the answers to that. I think it's, you know, a conversation we will need to continue to have.

Seth (36:33) *(approx)*
Dr. Miller, what do you think teachers should be asking parents about tech and AI when they're having these conversations?

Caroline (36:43) *(approx)*
What's your what's your answer to that question as a as a parent who has kids this age?

Seth (36:51) *(approx)*
I think that touche. I think that I think it's important to tread lightly, that there's a lot of like personal shame that can come along with like relying on a screen too much for parenting. I think that's what was going on in the theater when I was watching Toy Story Five. what I encourage parents to do is first understand their own relationship with technology and then have that open dialogue. I I think that a parent doesn't necessarily need to know what's happening at home with screens in the way that a parent might have the right to know what's happening at school with screens, but that a more conscious relationship with screens is something that would help all facets of this dynamic. So yeah, I think it would be about like and and and again, people don't a lot of people don't like hearing this, but like it starts with you as the adult, right? Like if like you can say all you want, but unless you're modeling a conscious relationship with screens, all that's gonna fall in deaf ears.

Caroline (38:09) *(approx)*
And I think it it it's has a lot to do with the distinction you were drawing before about the what teachers should be asking parents about social media use is very different from what teachers should be asking parents about generative AI use, right? And for me as a teacher, the social media use was r far more concerning to me than the generative AI use, right? Like I taught my students how to cite Chat GPT and just said, if you use it, just err on the side of err on the side of citing it. Right. That to me, I don't know, feels academic in a way that that teachers and parents probably see eye to eye and the social media use as a teacher, I did feel like it was impacting my students, especially socially and emotionally, in a way that would impact their their schoolwork, but that I would my hands were tied a little bit, right? That I didn't have it su stuff that came into my classroom. But you know, what when I was an advisor, like a homeroom advisor, we did this whole series where we tried to teach, I forget what it was called, but we tried to teach students about like social media and they just thought it was laugh, right? That just they thought that like we had absolutely no no no no right talking to them about like you know posting carefully and like the impact on on their life but I think it was it was prevalent and that's a place where teachers I think don't feel like they can say anything to parents even though it's something that really really comes into the classroom.

Seth (39:16) *(approx)*
Mm.

Seth (39:26) *(approx)*
Ha ha ha.

Seth (39:38) *(approx)*
Yeah. Yeah. Well, this so this conversation meandered through ed tech for specific discrete uses, social media use at home, social media as it presents in in popular media and movies, AI usage at home and at school, the future of that. And no wonder these things are getting conflated into a single issue. They are all Extremely related in that they are dependent on this new thing that we carry around in our pockets all the time. But it's our hope with this recording and with conversations that happen after you've heard this that some of this nuance can start to emerge because not all screen time is created equal, and the first step towards being able to have a more conscious relationship with all of this is to understand how each of these facets impact you as a technology user. Dr. Miller, Dr. Atkins, thank you so much for being here today.

Grant Atkins (40:48) *(approx)*
Thank you for having us.

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[OUTRO — recorded separately]

That's a wrap on our conversation with Dr. Grant Atkins and Dr. Caroline Miller.

The twelve-year-old who told me she could tell when her teachers were using AI for feedback — and that it bothered her because she felt it was their job to do it themselves — names something most ed tech debates miss. The mistrust doesn't only run from teachers worried about student cheating; it runs the other way too.

That points to something worth sitting with: disclosure isn't just a policy question. It's a relationship one.

One quick postscript: after we stopped recording, Caroline remembered two tools she wished she'd named when I asked about technology that genuinely transformed classroom experience. One is Equity Maps, which helps teachers track participation patterns in discussion-based classrooms, and the other is NoRedInk, an adaptive writing and grammar platform. We'll have links to both in the show notes, along with Rebecca Winthrop's report on AI and education from the Brookings Institution. And a quick correction from the conversation: Seth referred to her as Rebecca Chapman — her name is Rebecca Winthrop.

Thanks for listening to Make It Mindful, and we'll see you next time.